It’s hard to believe that we are already five weeks into the term. There has been a lot happening and we have plenty more coming up in the next few weeks. Life is always full, with lots of events, happenings and celebrations at OLOR.

In Week 3 we celebrated Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent and one of the main celebrations in the Catholic faith. Starting with our Ash Wednesday Mass at 7am, we welcomed our new families and inducted our student leaders for the year. Students who missed out on the early Mass were able to share the ashes later on in class. This visual reminder of the Catholic tradition and the beginning of Lent has been around for many centuries, and it serves to remind us that we need to spend more time thinking about who we are and what we do during Lent, as we prepare for the special time of Easter at the end.

Students loved sharing pancakes the day before on Shrove Tuesday. This also has religious origins, where traditionally the ‘rich’ foods in the house were used up before fasting during Lent. Today the idea of fasting carries on with us giving something up during Lent, as we make a small sacrifice to remember the greater sacrifice that Jesus made at Easter.

Our first SAPSASA event occurred in Week 3 as well, with six swimmers competing in Loxton against other Riverland schools. SAPSASA sport is a great way for students to compete against their local peers and possibly go on to represent the Riverland at bigger events against the rest of the state. The learning that can be made during sports events such as these are great, and learning to be humble in either victory or defeat are things that stay with us for life. We thank Mr Smart for his coordination of these events for our school.

In the next few weeks our Years 3 and 5 students will be undertaking the NAPLAN testing program for 2024. This is a nation-wide assessment that assesses students in their Literacy and Numeracy knowledge, and provides seme useful feedback to us as a school in what is working and what needs to change. We collect a lot of data each year, and one of our goals as a school is to get better at using that data to drive improvement in many areas, from learning and academics, to wellbeing and belonging. We know that all data is useful if it helps us improve, and look forward to sharing the ways in which we strive for that improvement.

One area we have changed our practices this year is in adopting the MultiLit Literacy suite across the school. This provides structured, sequential, evidence-based learning instruction in our Junior Primary classes, as well as explicit intervention for those students who need extra support based on our ongoing data collection. We look forward to seeing the progress of all of our students with this new program.

We are also excited to have started our PBIS journey. This year we are implementing PBIS (Positive Behaviour Interventions and Support), which is a framework for guiding us to support children with their behaviour education. It is an evidence-based multi-tiered framework for supporting students’ behavioural, academic, social, emotional and mental health. It is based on positive teaching of behavioural and social skills, with clear expectations and consistent reinforcement. Although we are in the very early stages of this learning, we are excited by what it can help us do to support our students in a world which is increasingly complex and always changing.

It has been a great start to the term and we look forward to sharing more with you as the year progresses. OLOR is always a vibrant and exciting place to be!

Mr Michael Slagter
Principal